Why do we read and study the
Old Testament? Because it's God's Word, and
because Christ said, They are they which testify of Me. In
the volume of the book, it is written of Him. When the Lord
preached, He preached from the Old Testament. When disciples
preached, they preached from the Old Testament. And the disciples,
when the Lord preached to them, various types and shadows on
that road to Emmaus, you remember? They had never seen those things
before, and they were amazed. Their hearts burned within them.
But these things are hidden from most people. These types and
these pictures in the Old Testament are hidden from most people. And this is one way we may know
that we are of God. He that is of God, heareth God's
words. And these things are made known
unto us, revealed unto us and our children. One way we may
know that the Son of God has come and given us an understanding
is we understand the types and the pictures and the symbols.
Are you with me? Things like the woman's scene,
it all starts there. If you don't understand what
happened in the garden, you don't understand anything. And we've
been given an understanding. The Ark of Noah, Noah's Ark,
there's a reason why that's there. That's such a picture of Christ.
And from the very beginning, the Lord shows us, the only ones
saved, life, is in Christ. It's in the ark, outside of Christ. God's a consuming fire. So things
like that, manna, Passover lamb. If you're idly singled, that
is, if God has shown you Christ, this whole body, of divinity
is full of light. And Christ is the light in it.
The light, the knowledge, the glory of God in the person, the
face, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jacob, we've seen, is
a type of Christ. Jacob have I loved, God said. Mine elect is the God of Jacob. Jacob's a type of Christ. Jacob
is his seed. All the sons of Jacob will not
be consumed. Christ's sons, he's the firstborn
among many brethren, are not consumed. Those, in fact, those
that come from him will not be consumed. Jacob came, and we've
looked at this, came for his bride, and he worked seven years
for her. He worked for his bride for seven
years. That's why he came into this heathen land. That's why
Christ came into this world, to save sinners, to find his
bride. Are you with me? I keep saying
that because I see some faces like that. The bridegroom came
for his bride. That's Christ. He came to work
for her for seven years. Seven is perfection. There's
a reason why Jacob worked seven years, not three, not four, not
eight, seven, because seven throughout the Scripture shows us perfection. Seven days God rested from His
work. On the seventh day the work is
finished. Christ came to do this perfect work for His bride, and
she is His bride by His work. Jacob is leaving. Verse 25 in
chapter 30. After Joseph is born, he says,
I'm leaving. Send me away. I'm going to my
own place. I'm going to my country. I'm
going back to my Father, and I'm taking my bride with me. This is why I came. And our Lord
Jesus Christ said, I go to the Father. I go to prepare a place
for you, the bride. He says, if I go, I'll come again
and receive you to myself. And where I am, you may be also.
I'm coming back to get my bride. And when the last one is born,
Joseph, when he's born, we're gone. We're all out of here.
That's why Christ came. Laban is a type, early on, of
the Lord's people. We saw that recently. He was
blessed for Jacob's sake. Look at verse 27. Laban said
unto Jacob, I pray thee, if I have found favor or grace in thine
eyes, tarry, don't leave, stay. I have learned by experience
that the Lord hath blessed me for thy sake." I'm blessed, Laban
said, because of your sake. And every one of God's people
know this, that they are blessed for Christ's sake. Stay, tarry
with us, dwell with us, the disciples of Christ say. Don't leave us.
We know we're only blessed because you came. Because you came. And all the blessings of God
are in him, by him, for him, to him. We're going to see that,
how Laban didn't have anything until Jacob came. All right? Laban did nothing for Jacob. Jacob did it all for Laban. Verse
31. Laban said to Jacob, What shall I give thee? Jacob said,
Thou shalt not give me anything. You're not going to give me anything.
You're not going to contribute anything. This is my work, my
work, my glory, my righteousness, he's going to say. This is all
for my righteousness, not yours. You're not going to contribute.
And all of God's people know they have no part in this thing
of salvation. You did not choose me, Christ
said. I chose you. Jacob came here and chose his
bride. Laban didn't choose her. Jacob
did. And Jacob took her. And Jacob
wooed her. And Jacob worked for her. And
Laban said, well, what can I contribute? Nothing. I did this. I did that. Now, there's a practical
lesson here. had much, wasn't he? He's a rich
man. When it was all said and done,
he became quite wealthy in cattle and so forth through his own
hard work and industry. Practical lesson. And he taught
this to his son Isaac, who also was a hardworking man and produced
much. And now Jacob learned this. Jacob
learned it. He was a hardworking, industrious
young man. He learned this from his father.
And so he prospered. And that's a lesson, a practical
lesson, that we teach to our children. And our Lord said that,
didn't He? I must work while there are twelve
hours in the day. But here's the story. Here's
our story today. A ring-streaked, speckled, spotted,
and brown sheep. All right? There could be no
other reason for this story except the gospel. There could be no
other reason for us to study this, and why God put this in
here, to show us that there could be no other reason. And I think
you'll see this. Alright? Jacob said, My wages
for coming here. Here's my wages. Verse 32. I'll pass through thy flock today,
removing from thence all the speckled and spotted cattle,
all the brown cattle among the sheep. the spotted and speckled
among the goats, that will be my hire. So shall my righteousness
answer for me in time to come. When it shall come for my hire
before thy face, every one, not speckled and spotted among the
goats, and brown among the sheep, that shall be counted stolen
with me." A thief, a robber. But so Laban said, Behold, I
would, it might be according to thy word. Amen. So be it,
he said. Read on. So he removed that day
the he-goats that were ring-streaked and spotted, all the she-goats
that were speckled and spotted. Everyone had some white in it,
all the brown among the sheep, and gave them into the hand of
his son. And he set three days' journey
between the twixt himself and Jacob, and Jacob fed the rest
of Laban's flock. Here's what Jacob said. Here's
what happened. Jacob said, This is going to
be my wages. what I came for. All right? When I leave here,
this is my portion. This is what I came for. The
ring-streaked, speckled, and spotted and brown cattle. They're
all mine. All right? All of which I will
separate from yours. And when it's all said and done,
I'm taking them with me. And every single ring-streaked,
speckled, and spotted cattle and brown one is mine. And in
the end, it will declare, I say, my righteousness. that I have
done this thing. It's all going to declare, when
I separate them from these white sheep and bring all these ringed,
straight, speckled and spotted and brown sheep into my fold,
it will be known that day that the Lord hath done this, and
these are Jacob's cattle. Do you understand what this is
talking about? Sure you do. I see recognition
in your faces. Here's what Romans 3 said. Now,
there's none righteous, no, not one. Before proof, Paul said
that we're not better than anybody. Jew and Gentile are all under
sin. None righteous, no, not one. And he goes on to list all these
feckled and spotted and ring-streaked and brown and filthy and rotten
sins of all people on the face of the earth. for all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. But God's people are justified
freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, whom God set forth to be propitiation. That is, Christ
crucified through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness
for the remission of sins that are past. To declare, I say,
His righteousness. that he might be just and justifier
of who? Ring-streaked, spotted and speckled
and brown-shaven. I don't want you to be impressed
by this type. There's a problem with preaching
from the type, is that we get impressed with the type. We are
enamored with the type. Oh, isn't that wonderful? But
what I want you to see is Christ. I want you to be amazed that
Jesus Christ would come for such a sinful person as you are, as
I am. And that how can God bring a
clean thing out of an unclean? These rings, straits, speckled,
and brown sheep. All right? All these rings, straits,
speckled, and spotted, and brown sheep represent the elect of
God, chosen, like Jacob chose them, called of God, given to
Christ. That's who was given to Jacob,
wasn't it? Not the white ones, but the spotted ones, the brown
ones. They were redeemed, bought, gathered by the Spirit of Christ,
and they're all sinners, as I read to you. They're all sinners to
declare his righteousness, that he hath done them. They are cattle
of his getting. Now, listen to this. All these
cattle belong to Laban at this time. They all belong to Laban. But Jacob is going to take them
from him. for his own. Now, here's what
the Scripture said in Luke chapter 4. Let me read this to you. You
don't have to turn for the sake of time. It says that our Lord,
when He came, when He first came, the first message He preached,
the first message He preached publicly was this. The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me preached
the gospel to the poor. He had sent me to heal the brokenhearted. He had sent me to preach deliverance
to the captives, the setting of liberty of them that are bruised. Every one of God's people, Laban
represents Satan, the God of this world. Every one of God's
people are held captive by him at his will. Christ came to take
captivity captive. Christ came to deliver His people
from the bondage of the God of this world. All His sinful people,
under the dominion of Satan, Christ came, a stronger than
he, to bind that strong man and take what belonged to him. He came to set them at liberty.
How are they known? How are Christ's people known?
Who are Christ's people? God's elects. Who are they? How
are they known? Really, there's only one way. How did you know Jacob's cattle? Jacob's cattle. Now, I'm going
to get into it in a minute. Laban's cattle were all white. Jacob said, those aren't mine.
Mine are all ring straight, speckled and spotted and brown. They're
not whites. Nobody wants white, spotted and
speckled sheep. They want purebreds, whites. Okay? Jacob said, that's not
who I came for. All Labans are white. Christ
came into this world to save sinners. Not the righteous. He said, I didn't come to call
the righteous, but sinners to repent. And there's no mistaking
what Christ did. There's no mistaking who belonged
to Him. Mary Magdalene, out of whom was cast the seven devils,
thief on the cross. There's no mistaking. There's no white in these. No
white in them. Christ came into this world to
save sinners. By sinners, we mean Romans 7
sinners. And only His people know what
that means. All of God's people know what
Romans 7 said. Very few people in this world
know what Romans 7 said or even care. But all of God's people
do. Psalm 38. All of God's people
know. They know and they declare like
Paul in Romans 7, that in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. There's no white in me. No soundness
in me. All of God's people know what
Isaiah 1 said. that from the top of their head,
sole of their feet to the top of their head, there's no soundness
in them. This is how you know them. When
the Spirit of God comes to round up, to separate the sheep from
the goats, it's not like people think, well, he rounds up the
good one, the white one, and then he leaves the brown one.
It's the opposite. God's ways are not our ways.
He rounds up His people and every one of them are brown. Like the
Shulamite maiden, Solomon's wife, she said, I'm black. Why would
He want me? For His glory, that's why. He
didn't come for the beautiful. Rahab knows. Rahab knows. She's the only one that knows
in all of Jericho. She's the only one that knows.
It's going to be by the sovereign mercy and grace of Joshua. If
this old harlot say, and lo and behold, she's the only one in
there, her and her house. Though all are sinners, all don't
know it. All don't believe it. Some people
say, well, I've got some faults. I've made a few mistakes, but
I'm not that bad. But all of God's people say there's
no good in them. No good. All of them. The elect of God are known, they're
sanctified first by the Spirit of God setting them apart by
convincing them of their sin. When he has come, our Lord said
in John 16, he will convince the world, not everybody in it.
But a people of every tribe, kindred, nation, and tongue under
heaven, he will condense them all. You are ring-striped, speckled,
and spotted, and brown. You are no good in here." You
see, they need Christ to come for them. They need Him to choose
them. That is how they elect of God
or not. Wretched, miserable, poor, naked, blind, halt, lame,
leper. Don't you love the story? Some
of you know the story in Leviticus 13 where the Lord said, when
a leper comes to the great high priest, when a leper comes to
the high priest, if he can find any good flesh in him, You're
supposed to look him over, you're supposed to strip him naked and
look him all over and if he finds one little bit of good flesh
in him, the high priest has pronounced him unclean. But if he's covered from head
to toe with leprosy, how are you making this up? The high
priest, Leviticus 13, the high priest sees that he's covered
from head to toe with leprosy. The high priest pronounces him
clean. That's so. In other words, if
somebody's got any good in them, they don't need Christ. If someone
has just some faults, a few spots, you know, that if I can work
real hard, I can rub these off or, you know, It'll go away. Use some natural remedies. Oh,
no, no. If there's no hope for you, you're
a cupboard full of leprosy. You come to the high priest,
and he's going to make that atonement, and there's one way you're going
to be clean. It's that blood of that sacrifice. And who's going to get the glory?
The sacrifice. The Lamb. The high priest. Not
the leper. Clean? Me? Clean? The leper?
Through and through? That's right. So all of God's people are convinced. And it must be something. But as I said, there's only one
reason this story was written. Can you think of another purpose
why this would be written? Why it gives all this time to
Jacob getting these spotted sheep? They testify to me. They testify. Laban is the one who took out
these rings straight. Verse 35 in our text, Laban is
the one who removed them that day and gave them in the hand
of his son, not Jacob. Jacob's son, his oldest son was
only seven years old. So it was Laban who gave them
to his son, all right? While Jacob fed Laban's sheep. The story is here that the spotted
and speckled ones and all that were kept by Laban's sons while
Jacob fed and took care of all the white sheep that belonged
to Laban. And as I've already pointed out,
Laban represents the god of this world, Satan, who has all people
in bondage. And our Lord is kind to the unjust
as well as the just. Our Lord feeds everybody. His
tender mercies are over all His works. All men are in His hands. Christ is merciful in that sense
and feeds and waters. Rain falls on the unjust as well
as the just, okay? He feeds everybody. But the white ones don't belong
to Him. It's the spotty ones. And he's going to take them from
labor in the end. And out of these white ones,
he's going to produce some speckled ones. This is what happened. You know,
the scripture says, who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? If you, can the Ethiopian change
his skin? Black man make himself white?
Can the leopard change his spots? No, it's not possible. God can. All right. On the other hand,
who can make a clean thing unclean? Who can make someone who thinks
they're clean believe that they're unclean?
God can and he must. Out of these white ones are going
to come some brown ones. That just doesn't happen. But
it did. Jacob made it happen. And here's
an illustration. Saul of Tarsus. Saul of Tarsus,
self-righteous, Pharisee, white. He thinks he's blameless. He
said concerning the righteousness of the law, he said, I'm blameless.
Nobody could convince him of sin. Me? No. Like that Pharisee. I'm not like other men? Like
this publican? Well, he's going to have to be
like a publican if he's one of the Lords. Well, lo and behold,
Saul of Tarsus, through the Lord Jesus, through
the gospel, the gospel comes, and Saul of Tarsus says, when
it's all over, in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. He who was white
becomes great, straight, speckled, spotted, and brown." That's how
you know him. That's how you know him. How?
A new birth. They've got to be born. And this
is Jacob's work. Look at verse 37. Jacob took
rods of green poplar, hazel, and chestnut trees. Three trees.
and peeled, or that is, made stripes in them, made the white
appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods that he'd
peeled or striped or scraped before the flocks and the gutters
and the watering trough with the flocks, and when they came
to drink, they would conceive. when they came to drink. And
the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle,
ring-streaked, these white sheep, in other words. They brought
forth ring-streaked, speckled, and spotted. And that's who Jacob
separated, the lambs, and set the faces of the flock toward
the ring-streaked and the brown, and put his own flock, that is,
all the ring-streaked, speckled, and spotted, and brown. Bear
with me. This is the Scripture, okay?
I'm not making this up. And I keep saying this to emphasize
this point, that's why this is written, to tell us beyond a
shadow of a doubt that the work is of the Lord. He put His cattle over here,
rain streaks back, and put these white ones over here. Now, these
are mine, and these are Laban's. And I'm going to leave them here
with Laban. And these I'm taking out of here. taking them back
to Canaan with them. All right? And how this happened,
how these white ones became these spotted and speckled ones, was
three trees. And these three trees are one
thing. A poplar tree. We have two poplars
now. There's a big bloom on these
trees. Very few other trees have such a number. Hazelnuts. Fruits. Hazel. Tree. Hazel tree. Chestnuts. Chestnut. Used to build barns and houses
out of chestnut that went. It'd last forever. In other words, there's blooming
like Aaron's rod that budded. There's fruit to be had from
these trees, and it's lasting. These three are one. These three
represent Christ. Jacob did this to these trees.
He made them strike. And Christ did what He did on
Calvary's tree. By His stripes, not a play on
words, but by His stripes, we are healed. And the only way
we're made into His people is by seeing Christ and Him crucified.
There's a new birth that takes place. When He put these rods,
these three together, All these cattle came and looked, and they
were gravitated to it, and they conceived and brought forth rainstripes,
peckled and spotted, and brown sheep. Jacob's sheep were all
born by seeing these striped trees. Why would that have been
there if that didn't represent the Lord Jesus Christ? The only
way we're born into His kingdom is by seeing Christ in Him crucified.
by his tribe. We know. We know. The only way
we'll see that we're really centered is by seeing Christ made sin
by his tribe. The only way. As they came and
saw these rods, what came out of all of this was new births.
Jacob's cattle. Never lost you. Verse 39. So it says in verse 39, Verse 39, the flocks conceived,
and Jacob, verse 40, separated them from the white ones. And
verse 41, it came to pass when the strong cattle conceived,
Jacob laid the rods, they would conceive, verse 42, the cattle
that were feeble, he put them not in, but the feebler were
Laban's and the stronger were Jacob's. And the man increased.
Jacob increased exceedingly. He had much cattle, maidservants,
menservants, camels, and asses. In other words, all of Jacob's
cattle became stronger and stronger and stronger, while Laban's became
weaker and weaker and weaker. Paul wrote this. He said, We
know this, that the old man is perishing. The old man. But the new man is being renewed
day by day. The elder shall serve the younger. Greater is he that is in you
than he is in the world. Stronger, yeah, Christ in you,
the hope of glory. This new man, created in the
image of Christ, will prevail, will overcome. And that old man,
he's dying. He's dying. He's dead. He's dying. And you know why
all this happened? It happened for Jacob's glory.
Chapter 31, verse 1. Jacob heard the words of Laban's
son saying, Jacob hath taken away all that was our father's.
He's taken away. And all that was our father's,
and that which was our father's, hath he gotten all the glory. and Jake Laban's countenance. Oh, he wants to get Jacob now.
Satan. Christ said the God of this world
has come. He's come. And he said to his
disciples, now is the God of this world cast out. Now. And Christ did what he did for
his glory. The saving of sinners is for
his glory. And Satan, the Lord takes from
him his captives. And he's angry, but he can't
do anything about it. He can't touch them. This is
for God's glory, for Christ's glory. And look at verse 17 and
18. I close. Jacob rose up, set his
sons and his wives upon camels. He carried away, listen as I
read this, he carried away all his cattle, all his goods, which
he had gotten, the cattle of his getting, which he had gotten
to go to Isaac, his father. Isn't that amazing? And I read to you this in closing.
When the children of Israel were coming out of Egypt, here's what
Moses said. In Exodus 10, they were coming
out of Egypt. He said, Our cattle shall go
with us, there shall not a hoof be left behind. And it wouldn't
surprise me that every one of those cattle were ringed, scraped,
speckled, and spotted. And then in Exodus 12, it says
when they left, when they went out of that place, 600,000 on
foot, men besides children, and it says it was a mixed multitude. flocks of herds, spotted and
speckled, out of every tribe kindred. And you know something
else? It wouldn't have surprised me
that once Jacob, he took all these cattle back to Canaan,
back to his father's house. He took them all. Everything
that was his went into the promised land. It wouldn't surprise me
one bit, had this happened, that every one of those rings, strakes,
speckled, and spotted and brown sheep, as soon as they crossed
in, turned away. That's what's going to happen.
I'll show you a mystery. We're going to be changed. And
we're going to be without spots in His presence. But this is
how you know Him now. That's how you know God's people
now. They don't look necessarily any different than the rest of
the people this world, although they are. But they sure know
what they are, and that's who Christ came for, and he's going
to get the glory, and that's who he's taking out of here.
So take comfort. If you feel yourself to be the
chief of sinners, no good in you, spotted all over, take comfort. Christ came for you. Okay.